Philip Hodgetts’ unique blend of business and production knowledge gives him insight into the current state of the industry, and a remarkably accurate look forward. Here he shares his thinking, and points to articles of interest from other sites, with context as to why they're interesting.

It always seems that NAB is about the nights when the social activities start. Sure, NAB is an important professional event, but if I’m honest my primary motivation is to see friends I only see at NAB. Because I tend to research industry trends continually through the year and because I’m still on many people’s announcement lists from my BuZZ days, it’s only the surprise announcements that are new to me.

This year I’ll be at the FCPWORKS demo room at the Wynn with some new features for Lumberjack System and our workflow apps. Other than that I’ll be on the show floor Wednesday and at some social engagements during the week.

As is usual at this time of the year, Greg tallied up our software releases for the year. Well, more accurately his software releases, as I do not write the software. Surprisingly, we’re still updating software for Final Cut Pro 7.

Before running Final Cut Pro X 10.1 the first time, read this.

One of the most exciting new features of Final Cut Pro X 10.1 is the introduction of Libraries. Libraries now contain both Events and Projects in one package, very similar to classic Final Cut Pro “projects”.

This is a huge improvement, but of course it leaves no role for Event Manager X with Libraries, which are well managed within Final Cut Pro X 10.1.

Except Event Manager X is the best tool to use during the migration to Final Cut Pro X Libraries, therefore from today it’s free.

Greg and I will head out for a long walk when we want to consider some big picture concept. Our most recent walk challenge: how do we fit the concept of Keyword Ranges in Final Cut Pro X, into the more traditional NLE model. As well as reminding me of the Biblical warning about new concepts into old models (at least metaphorically) there were interesting lessons along the way.

I know, we don’t release anything new for the longest time (although a lot of updates) and then we do two apps with only a week in between. Both Producer’s Best Friend and Change List X have been in development for quite some time, reaching the point where we think they were ready for release.

Industry standard Change Lists for updating Post Audio or VFX of changes in the “final” edit.

“The alternative is a complex dance of copy/paste of individual clip names and timecode in and out points,” says Intelligent Assistance CEO Philip Hodgetts. “Instead, of hours or days, the entire process is done in seconds.”

Producer’s Best Friend reports on Clips in an Event, Compound Clip or Project. The report includes a Summary Sheet, and individual sheets for Clips, Roles and Subroles, Markers, Keywords, Video Effects, Audio Effects and Transitions.

Hodgetts continues “Producer’s Best Friend can generate music use reports – as well as Video and Audio Effects, Roles and Subroles, Transitions and Markers – directly to a fully formatted Excel spreadsheet, without the convoluted use of an EDL or copy/paste techniques.”

For just $99.99 Producer’s Best Friend extracts all the information from an XML export of your Events, Compound Clips or Projects and formats it in an Excel spreadsheet in seconds. There is more information available at http://assistedediting.com/ProducersBestFriend/ along with a short demo video.

For reports from Final Cut Pro 7 and Premiere Pro CS 6 and later, Intelligent Assistance has Sequence Clip Reporter.

As part of our ongoing beta testing of Lumberjack we recently did a shoot at Furnishing Hope for After Action reports on the Military Entertainment Channel. I get to edit this one, so it was really nice to start with my multicam clips fully logged.